Skip to main content
Salad

Dressing for Cabbage

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with vinegar, sugar, butter, flour, mustard, cream or milk, and boiled egg, served over chopped cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Dressing for Cabbage

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dressing for Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage and place it in a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, butter, flour, and mustard mixed with a little cream or milk.

  2. Heat the mixture until it thickens slightly.

  3. Add the boiled egg, chopped, to the dressing.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot dressing over the chopped cabbage and mix well.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the warm dressing, becoming tender and flavourful.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the flavour of the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Thickens the dressing as it heats, giving it body so it clings to the cabbage.
Egg
Its boiled, chopped pieces add richness and texture to the dressing.

The step that matters

Heating the dressing until it thickens. Flour thickens only when heated enough for its starch to swell. Heating too little leaves the dressing thin, while overheating or stirring poorly can scorch it or form lumps.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, butter, flour, mustard, cream, egg):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, butter, flour, mustard, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes